Temporary Receiver for March Madness? Options?

Every year I host a party for the early round of March Madness. I have a projector in my basement that I have a Directv receiver for, and two extra old tube TVs so that we can watch multiple games at once. In the past, I had multiple older owned receivers that I just activated for the weekend, and then deactivated right after. Now though I have the whole home system installed, so those old receivers no longer work. Is there any cost effective way to get the game to more TVs for just one weekend without buying receivers? I was thinking of using a laptop with DirecTV4pc, but the two laptops I've tried were not up to snuff in the video card department. What are my options? I can think of 2 things.

1) Have someone who has DirecTV bring their receiver over. Will that work? It's kind of a hassle for them though.

2) Have someone install Directv4pc on their laptop and bring it over. But they would have to have a video out that would feed an old TV, and the likelihood of someone having a laptop good enough for the program, and also having an analog out for a TV is kind of a long shot.

For the games on that are on your local station pick them up with an antenna? If you have strong enough digital signal over the air you can almost get away with a paper clip in the F connector and get good signal (even better if you get your kid to stand there and hold the paper clip). Of course start testing this out now to see how much antenna you need. Find a cheap indoor antenna at radio shack or hardware store. If it was a CRT you are using then you will need to borrow a STB converter they were giving away the $40 coupons on a few years ago. Guess if you buy these you could always return them after tourney.

Then use the receivers for games on the non over air stations.

The Directv2pc limitation is playing a game already recorded on one of your HR receivers, but that may be ok to you...

I do not know what they are going to do this year, but in the past, our local CBS affiliate showed all of the games in SD using the sub channels. The good thing about that is that only the game that was on the .1 channel was blacked out on DirecTV, so I still had the option of watching the other games in HD on DirecTV

Sigma, I think I read somewhere that games were not going to be streamed this year? If they are, is the quality of the streaming OK to show on a 32" LCD?

Bigglebowski, the OTA signal is very sketchy in my area because of hills around me. I haven't tried it in a couple of years though, maybe the tuner in the 32" will be better than one's that I tried in the past.

Longrider, I have the single wire implementation, so no legacy ports.

Carl6, That was my plan for last year, I have an old single LNB dish still up on the house, ran RG6 from the wire coming in, but no signal. Not sure what the issue was, but I should try that again to try and troubleshoot. Thanks for the reminder. Can't do an easy temporary because of many trees on my lot.

• Turner will stream its linear television games online for free on an authenticated basis on the Turner websites (TBS.com, TNT.tv and truTV.com) for consumers who have a cable, satellite or telco subscription that includes these respective Turner networks. Authenticating this year’s Tournament across the Turner Networks is an extension of the company’s TV Everywhere initiative, which is currently available to more than 75 million households.

• All games airing on CBS will be available for free on CBSSports.com.

Is there any reason to think that if I could get it working on a laptop with hdmi out, that DirecTVtoPC would work better, meaning produce a better picture than streaming from the Turner Streaming Everywhere service?

Put up an 18" round dish and feed your old receivers off that? Pretty easy to do if you've got a place where it can go.

Click to expand...

$27.99 from solidsignal.com and includes the mast, reflector and LNB which will feed 2 receivers if you need more than that you can pick up an Aspen Eagle el cheapo multi-switch for between 10-20 bucks depending on how many feeds you need. Plus it's re-useable for future stuff... Tailgating, races... etc... and if for some reason your SWM ever bit the dust you could hook everything but HR34/H25 up and watch SD until the issue is fixed. My $.02 :shrug:

The way I read this is that is free if you logon directly to the Turner websites.

"Turner will stream its linear television games online for free on an authenticated basis on the Turner websites (TBS.com, TNT.tv and truTV.com) for consumers who have a cable, satellite or telco subscription that includes these respective Turner networks. Authenticating this year’s Tournament across the Turner Networks is an extension of the company’s TV Everywhere initiative, which is currently available to more than 75 million households."

Does this mean If I want to switch games I have to switch to a different website and log on again? Seems like a lot of trouble to avoid a $4 charge.

Also I think it means that if you want to watch on their mobile app then it is $3.99. Am I reading this wrong?